iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

OK OK, i'm a sucker for arcade flying pew pew pew games... and apparently if you preorder (which ends in a few hours I guess?) they give you the steam version of AC:Zero as a DLC bonus...

screenshot of steam downloading Ace Combat 8 Wings of Theve

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 7h

oh shit, ace combat 8 comes out tomorrow?

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 9h

Yay, so the kid was having trouble following the metronome and the teacher's way didn't seem to be working so I told the kid to play like they were using their sound to high-five the metronome beat and it looks like they're getting it now

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 10h

実際問題、ISPの方が落ちやすいｗ　木枝の落下とか、クソ高いトラックが道中の線全部引っ張ったとかｗ

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 10h

こっちはUbiquitiのルーターを複数使っていて、uptimeが一番長いのは今 318d 15h 15m だし、停電とアップデート以外はほぼ落ちたことないかも

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Reposted by Randy Au

Marco @mcognetta.bsky.social · 17h

🚨 [Token][ization] Paper Alert 🚨 Tokenization is a wildly understudied area of language modeling despite it having effects across all of NLP. Over the past ~8 months, 32 (!) tokenizer researchers put together the most comprehensive survey of the field. Check it out!

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 30/09/2026

ugh this cold has got various muscles in my head extra tight, and that tension eerywhere is making all sorts of things hurt on my face... including my teeth =_=

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 29/09/2026

This week on Counting Stuff, probably because I've had to do this work so much over the years, but man, analyzing user feedback mechanism data is a horrid slog #dataBS www.counting-stuff.com/feedback-mec...

counting-stuff.com

Feedback mechanisms are terrible data sources

Reflecting on how we collect a ton of data that doesn't get used.

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 29/09/2026

.... we're not even a month into the school year and the kid has already brought a plague home 😭

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 28/09/2026

Slightly better katsuramaki today, this is one single continuous cut of cucumber, though the thickness is stupidly uneven

Photo of a cutting board with a mostly cut cucumber on it, and a chef knife resting on the side. A wide long mostly translucent piece of thinly shaved cucumber lays flat and takes up about 2/3rds of the length of the board

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Reposted by Randy Au

DiscoStarslayer @disco.camp · 28/09/2026

If you thought Final Fantasy's localized naming was confusing, may I introduce you to Crazy Castle

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 27/09/2026

Still need to work on katsuramaki cutting skills... This run was lucky but usually I can't get it this long

A hand holding a cucumber with a chef knife cutting a translucent sheet off the cucumber

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 26/09/2026

Had to trim the edge of a door today and knew it was gonna be a pain in the butt with the tools I had.... So bought the cheapest power hand plane for ~35 and it chewed through the job in like 5 minutes

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 26/09/2026

omg ace combat 8 is coming out soon... why did I buy FF7R and R2

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 26/09/2026

I give up on messing with apple devices because there's always going to be that one or three screws that decides to disappear into the ether if I even try

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 26/09/2026

urgh ok. so if I wiggle the cable of the thing I just made a bit,m sometimes the signal gets static-y or has other issues. BUT it's fine if I leave it alone... I don't think it's a soldering connector but instead RCA connector dimension/contact issues? maybe

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Reposted by Randy Au

Iris/アイリス 🏳️‍⚧️ @irisdescentbird.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

funniest rom hack reasoning of all time

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 26/09/2026

I'm having trouble hearing you over the crowd of bros from a bunch of fields getting in line to do the 'well akchuallyyy' 🥸

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 26/09/2026

probably one of the ugliest soldering jobs i've done in a very long while.. but whatever, tiny space, but it works and now I can balance the L/R channels on my headphone amp

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 26/09/2026

<_< need to make a janky audio cable device and since i have ton of little 3ft cat5e cables i don't use... that'll be good enough for the job <_<

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 25/09/2026

There's a subtle L/R unbalance in my headphone amp chain and Im gonna slap together these parts to just trim the signal down but lol the connectors are dominating the siZe constraints

Two small blue trim potentiometers sit on a brown proto board close together, a pair of golden rca jacks sit above them and are as t less double the width, then two rca cable plugs are below them and are much bigger than anything else

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 25/09/2026

Ugh woke up and the heat was running already .. winter is sneaking up

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 24/09/2026

why not just have an unholy chain of python wrapping rust wrapping zig or something similarly horrific that your successors will curse about for days?

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 24/09/2026

Ok screw this, so I'm somewhere in my audio chain there is a slight, but audible channel imbalance, I can tweak it with my speaker gain but headphones it's not easy so now I gotta make a little box with a pair of pots to trim down the offending side

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 24/09/2026

ugh had to dismantle and resolder the switches on my volume control box because apparently I overheated the switches the first time around and they got a bit wiggly and/or had bad connections

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 24/09/2026

wtf it's thursday already?

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 24/09/2026

finally unpacked my headphone amp and hooked it up to my desk audio setup... and the left channel was SUPER static-y even while completely unplugged... was about to pop it open when I tried swapping the left/right vacuum tube and... fixed. apparently there was some pin corrosion or something

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 24/09/2026

.... traced a weird leak in the basement FROM AN AREA NO PIPES WERE RUNNING.... to... a drippy hose left on the porch in a corner that had somehow started dripping water ... ughhhh,

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 22/09/2026

This week on Counting Stuff, since I often default to e-commerce as my "here's a simple database" example, I wondered just how many ways people have done it. It's a lot more than one. #dataBS www.counting-stuff.com/how-many-way...

counting-stuff.com

How many ways can we database a store?

While you'd think there would be one "obvious" way, clearly different people have different opinions about what is obvious

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 22/09/2026

7yo is going through probably one of the more dreaded phases of learning to play music... playing to the metronome because eventually they have to grok that music at the minimum is 2 things... correct pitch and timing... we got decently far over 3 years glossing over it tho

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 21/09/2026

ok against better judgement I think I'll give the FF7 remake another try.... the battle system continues to be godawful tho

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 21/09/2026

ugh swapping my volume control box to 1/4 TRS cables made sure things are connecting firmly over RCA, which is great, but now I have to get all sorts of new cables to match the terminations

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 21/09/2026

grrr where did I put my headphone amps...

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 19/09/2026

Oh yeah one time I was driving and a stupidly annoying loud car was coming up behind me... I let it pass expecting a dropped civic... But no, instead a raised truck with a busted exhaust 🤔🤔🤔🤔

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 17/09/2026

I just remembered I had the final fantasy pixel remaster soundtrack buried in all my music files

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 16/09/2026

went out of my way to buy a new one recently since I think they're useful for handling cans of liquids

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 15/09/2026

Wao, the hydraulic impact driver I got to replace the older impact is awesome because it's got a slower 1st gear, which is what I use the most on top of feathering the trigger, And the hammer is stupidly quiet

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 15/09/2026

ahh yeah, for coding my favorite claude thing to do is just tell it to shut up/stay minimally verbose/ or otherwise don't narrate/explain until the final report since it'll save on token burn AND cut down on the BS that passes in front of my eyes

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 15/09/2026

I find it's much easier to give it semi-objective things to do, mostly 'fact check this thing' / "find me references/counter examples" than give it room to make fawning comments

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 15/09/2026

This week on Counting Stuff, we're likely to say goodbye to leap seconds in October! None of us will live to see another such clock jump. Plus the whole negative leap second risk is all the earth's core's fault. #dataBS www.counting-stuff.com/were-almost-...

counting-stuff.com

We're almost done with leap seconds for our lifetimes

I'm gonna lose one of my favorite topics =(

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 15/09/2026

We're celebrating the slow coming of autumn by putting the heating pad out for the cat. it's honestly not cold enough yet to require the pad, but the cat loves the thing

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 15/09/2026

... The cat just started licking the cheeto i had in my hand =\

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 14/09/2026

Yeah, apparently Milwaukee introduced a hydraulic impact in the same line that fits my use cases better so upgrade time! And the old one is the beater for outside tasks

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 14/09/2026

Stupid sustained inflation has apparently changed my shopping habits to where if I can stock extra durable things that I'll eventually consume later, I will

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 14/09/2026

Me: what do I write about today 🧠: there's that leap second thing Me: but that's a whole damn worhsop with like 9 decks from literal experts in the field and stuff! 🧠: ... and? Me: ...

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 14/09/2026

🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠

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Randy Au @randyau.com · 14/09/2026

=\ my trusty impact driver.. which i've had for like 12+ years.. fell into a (clean) toilet for 5 seconds before I grabbed it out and while it works the speed control board stopped working so now it's permanently stuck on the 2nd gearing =(

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